expression level of chromodomain y (cdy): potential marker for prediction of sperm recovery in non-obstructive azoospermia

Background: the availability of testis specific genes will be of help in choosing the most promising biomarkers for the detection of testicular sperm retrieval in patients with non-obstructive azoospermia (noa). testis specific chromodomain protein y 1 (cdy1) is a histone acetyltransferase which concentrates in the round spermatid nucleus, where histone hyperacetylation occurs and causes the replacement of histones by the sperm-specific dna packaging proteins, tnps and prms. objective: the aim was to evaluate cdy1 gene as a marker for predicting of successful sperm retrieval in noa patients. materials and methods: this research was conducted on 29 patients with noa who had undergone testicular sperm extraction (tese) procedure. noa patients were subdivided into patients with successful sperm retrieval (noa+, n=12) and patients with unsuccessful sperm retrieval (noa-, n=17). relative expression of cdy1 gene and chromatin incorporation of cdy1 protein were measured by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qrt-pcr) and elisa assay, respectively.results: quantification of mrna relative expression and incorporation of cdy1 protein in chromatin showed significant lower expressions and protein levels of cdy1 in testis tissues of noa- in comparison to noa+ group. conclusion: the findings in this study demonstrated a correlation between the low levels of cdy1 function and unsuccessful sperm recovery in the testicular tissues of noa- compared to noa+ patients. therefore, it can be reasonable to consider cdy1 as a potential biomarker for predicting the presence of spermatozoa, although the claim needs more samples to be confirmed.